not help the Dutch to purge
At Antwerp their cathedral church?
Sing catches to the saints at Mascon,
And tell them all they came to ask him?
Appear in divers shapes to Kelly,
And speak i' th' nun of Loudun's belly?
Meet with the Parliament's committee
At Woodstock on a pers'nal treaty?
... &c. &c.'

_Hudibras_, II. 3.

Hopkins is the most famous of his class on account of his
superior talent; but both in England and Scotland witchfinders,
or _prickers_, as they were sometimes called, before and since
his time abounded--of course most where the superstition raged
fiercest. In Scotland they infested all parts of the country,
practising their detestable but legal trade with entire impunity.
The Scottish prickers enjoyed a great reputation for skill and
success; and on a special occasion, about the time when
Hopkins was practising in the South, the magistrates of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne summoned from Scotland one of great
professional experience to visit that town, then overrun with
witches. The magistrates agreed to pay him all travelling
expenses, and twenty shillings for every convicted criminal. A
bellman was sent round the town to invite all complainants to
prefer their charges. Some thirty women, having been brought to
the town-hall, were publicly subjected to an examination. By the
ordinary process, twenty-seven on this single occasion were
ascertained to be guilty, of whom, at the ensuing assizes,
fourteen women and one man were convicted by the jury and
executed.

Three thousand are said to have suffered for the crime in England
under the supremacy of the Long Parliament. A respite followed on
this bloody persecution when the Independents came into power,
but it was renewed with almost as much violence upon the return
of the Stuarts. The Protectorship had been fitly inaugurated by
the rational protest of a gentleman, witness to the proceedings
at one of the trials, Sir Robert Filmore, in a tract, 'An
Advertizement to the Jurymen of England touching Witches.' This
was followed two years later by a similar protest by one Thomas
Ady, called, 'A Candle in the Dark; or, a Treatise concerning the
Nature of Witches and Witchcraft: being Advice to Judges,
Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace and Grand Jurymen, what to do
before they pass Sentence on such as are arraigned for their
Lives as Witches.' Notwithstanding the general toleration